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Norma H. Johnson, 79, Dies; Oversaw Lewinsky Inquiry

Norma Holloway Johnson, the chief judge of the United States District Court in Washington who oversaw the grand jury investigation into President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, died Sunday at her brother’s home in Lake Charles, La. She was 79.

The cause was a stroke, said her brother, Lionel Holloway.

Known for her no-nonsense courtroom manner, Judge Johnson — the first African-American woman appointed to the federal bench in Washington — held ultimate authority over the direction of the 1998 investigation, led by the independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, into President Clinton’s relationship with Ms. Lewinsky, a White House intern.

Among a series of pivotal decisions, Judge Johnson delivered a setback to the president’s efforts to limit the scope of the investigation, ruling that he could not invoke executive privilege or lawyer-client privilege in trying to block prosecutors from questioning his aides. She also ruled that documents drafted by one of Ms. Lewinsky’s lawyers were not protected by lawyer-client privilege and had to be given to Mr. Starr.

The investigation led to the impeachment of Mr. Clinton by the House of Representatives in December 1998 and his subsequent acquittal on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice in a 21-day Senate trial.

Judge Johnson, who presided over a number of high-profile cases, could be particularly tough on those who wielded influence. “No sentence is sufficient to atone for your crimes,” she told Joseph Waldholtz, the former husband of Representative Enid Greene, Republican of Utah. Mr. Waldholtz pleaded guilty to tax and election fraud in 1996, and Judge Johnson sentenced him to 37 months in prison.

That same year, when she sentenced Representative Dan Rostenkowski, an Illinois Democrat and longtime chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, to 17 months in prison for mail fraud, she told him: “In your important position, you capriciously pursued a course of personal gain for you, your family and your friends. You have stained them, as well as yourself, and the high position you held.”

Judge Johnson was once reversed in a fraud case after an appeals court cited her “near constant criticism” of a lawyer. The court said she “frequently berated, interrupted and otherwise spoke negatively to” the lawyer. It ordered another judge to retry the case.

But she also showed compassion on the bench. In 1998, a young woman appearing before Judge Johnson on a tax-evasion charge had apparently gotten into financial trouble because of a drug problem.

“Four children!” Judge Johnson said after asking the woman about her family. “It’s really so important that you be of sound mind and not have your mind clouded by any substances you can’t control, so you can take care of them. Even though I’m dismissing your case today, it’s so important that you follow through on your treatment.”

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Then, almost whispering, she said, “Those children need you more than they need anything else.”

Normalie Loyce Holloway grew up “dirt poor” in Lake Charles, said her brother, who is her only immediate survivor. Her husband of 46 years, Julius Johnson, a retired administrative law judge for the Department of Labor, died last year.

Born on July 28, 1932, she was the daughter of Henry and Beatrice Williams Holloway. By the time Normalie was in high school, her parents had separated and she was working at the soda fountain at the town’s first black-owned drugstore — for $9 a week — to help support her mother and brother. Still, she told friends, she wanted to be a lawyer.

After high school, at her mother’s suggestion, Ms. Holloway moved to Washington, where she lived with a cousin. She graduated from District of Columbia Teachers College in 1955. While teaching at a junior high school, she studied law at night at Georgetown University, receiving her degree in 1962.

Eight years later, after working as a Justice Department lawyer and then as a corporation counsel for the District of Columbia, she was appointed to the district’s Superior Court by President Richard M. Nixon. President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the federal bench in 1980. She was chief judge from 1997 to 2001.

“Ironically,” The Washington Post reported when Judge Johnson retired in 2004, “when she was a new Justice Department lawyer in 1963, the then-chief judge of the same federal court refused to let her speak in his courtroom, and a white colleague from Justice had to be called to take her place.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 22, 2011, on Page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: Norma H. Johnson, 79, Dies; Oversaw Lewinsky Inquiry. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe